A quantum theory of the whole numbers is a theory that aims to expose the hidden pattern of the prime numbers. The circumstantial evidence that such numbers exist were found on the markings of Ishango bones, parts of archeological research of central equatorial Africa dated more than 20000 years ago. The discovery was made in 1960 at then the Belgian Congo centered near the headwaters of the Nile River now on the border between modern-day Uganda and the Congo. It was discovered by the Belgian archeologist Jean de Heinzelin de Braucourt. These markings indicate knowledge of basic arithmetic operations: addition, multiplication, division, and subtraction. But the mere appearance of prime numbers indicates more advanced knowledge of mathematic. Many millennia later, others believe that the Chinese were the first civilized culture to use numbers representing human characteristics: even numbers for human female and odd numbers for human male while composite odd numbers represent effeminate numbers. Evidently, the Chinese by 1000 BC had already understood the special properties of prime numbers. They showed that only even and composite odd numbers can be arranged into rectangular arrays of row counts or column counts greater or equal to two.

The ancient Greeks also attributed sexual qualities to numbers. But early on they were able to unleash the power of the prime numbers as building blocks for all other real whole numbers. Their knowledge possibly was instrumental for Mendeleev’s creation of the periodic table of the chemical elements. It is believed that the library of the research institute at ancient Alexandria kept tables of prime numbers but these were lost to historical progression. However, in 300 BC Euclid published his 13 books of the Elements. Book IX proposition 14 became known as the fundamental theorem of arithmetic. This theorem states that every composite numbers (even or odd) is the product of unique prime factors. In proposition 20, Euclid gave the first classic proof that there are infinitely many prime numbers. His contemporary Eratosthenes recorded lists of prime numbers up to 1000 using a process of elimination now known as the sieve of Eratosthenes. This is the first written record for the atom theory or quantum theory of numbers.